My World in El Salvador: Final Week of Training

November 21, 2007

yummy.
Well, my Spanish classes have been suspended indefinitely. Wahoo, I took advantage of it today and went to San V early to run errands and set up the blog more. I tried to set up a slideshow from Flickr on this thing where I am slowly adding all my pictures, but it hasn’t decided to work yet….oh well…eventually.
I spent all day at the center, first to do that, then I met with the directora and the other girl helping organize thanksgiving and we went shopping in the mercado to get some crack. Haha, thought that was funny.
Naaaa…. A bunch of random crud…everything from garlic to green beans, potatoes, carrots etc. We spent the rest of the day making breads, eating raw batter, and then finally receiving mail and packages. I got like 7 letters from mother, two from cari, and then the Systematic Theology book from Boss….aka Mr. Musgrave for the non family members. This was good and all, but it ate up my 2.50 on credit at the office so they are holding the package with the flashdrive until I make it there to pay another 2.50. Scavengers.

Tonight the previous volunteer that lived with my fam is visiting….we had a good time making funnies.

Leave it to our group to make the national paper after going to a concert in the capital.

Since I have still not started Lord of the Flies, I send off with a quote from the newest book sent my way:

“The precise determination of the extent of the canon of Scripture is therefore of the utmost importance. If we are to trust and obey God absolutely we must have a collection of words that we are certain are God’s own words to us. If there are any sections of Scripture about which we have doubts whether they are God’s words or not, we will not consider them to have absolute divine authority and we will not trust them as much as we would trust God himself.” (emphasis added by me)

Systematic Theology, by Wayne Grudem, p. 54

*since this is my blog, I have the right to critique things that are sometimes…..not to my liking J But to the history nerds, the problem with this line of thinking should be quite obvious.*
This quote would open many doors to discussion (of which I find this canon topic very intriguing), but I will limit my comment to one door. If the last sentence is taking into consideration the first 5 centuries of Christendom, instead of just the last 5, Protestants would have an even shorter Bible, because I can think of five books right off the bat that were…vehemently….contested in the East and West, in different centuries. Even after the fifth century there was dissension at times as different council decrees spread throughout the known world. So how would those in 3rd century who rejected Revelation, Hebrews, and John/Peter’s Epistles be wrong, according to the aforementioned ‘doctrine’ of rejecting that which was once questioned? After reading the above rule can we really disagree with those who discarded these books because they knew there was many who doubted? Or…to dangerously continue this line of thought, can we even deem these books today as containing God’s truth within them since they were once doubted by large portions of Christendom? For me, this puts too many forks along what could be more or less a straight road. It seems only practical J.

November 23, 2007

Whew. This last week and the next one have been and will be crazy. I went to San Salvador yesterday morning early before preparation for our Thanksgiving hoorah and soccer game to buy a present for my family. I found a really cheap DVD player in a store there that pretty much matched what I wanted to give back to them. I think they will get a lot of use out of it…well as long at the little terror doesn’t break it. I gave it to them tonight, and had to mess with it to get it to work because it was only in black and white. They are very excited.

Anyways, once that was done, I went straight back to San Vicente to keep up the work on the Thanksgiving prep. At 2:30pm we left and went to a field in one of the trainee communities to play the annual staff versus trainees game. Our group was ghetto, but we had a bunch that could play somewhat. But only one or two girls that were really….ok….haha. Of course, I hadn’t played in quite a while, but it came back here and there. Although, I was like the only one without cleats, crazy right? But that became obvious soon when I was falling left and right all over the place. My previous volunteer said he left some cleats and shinguards, and I hope they both fit, cause if not that’s gonna cost a good 30 dolla at the very least…if I can find my size.
We were getting murdered 6-1, when we came back 6-6 when we had most of the guys in there to keep battling. Then with a few minutes left they scored 2 more. However, in our defense, they were using natives, and we had a girl in goal, who played really well, but there were at least 3 goals that should have been blocked.

Anyways, a group of us sat in the parking lot for a while at night waiting for someone to pick us up because the keys were lost, but once we got back, we got to take showers in the actual training center and then finish the cooking. The actual dinner was glorious. In two days we had made, two turkeys, with stuffing, gravy, green beans, gizzards (from yours truly), a ton of mashed potatoes, and a small thing of sweet potatoes, of which we couldn’t find much. It was hilarious though, the heads and necks and feet came inside the turkeys when we opened them, so I put them on a separate plate with the rest of the food. No one else tried the gizzards I cooked other than one person. I ate a ridiculous amount. Then, for desert we had made two pumpkin pies, an apple pie, and a bunch of breads, as well as bought two things of ice cream. That was killer, I couldn’t move I had eaten so much.

Wow.

Which was a good transition into us sitting around and saying what we were thankful for, to the group superlatives to which each of us more or less got one, and then to the talent show. Wow, the talent show….there’s a reason our training class already has a reputation among the volunteers in this country, and this show just proved it. Craziness.

We stayed in San V that where I got to sleep in the lobby of the hotel on an air mattress (I am really beginning to love sleeping outside), and then had to wakeup and go to class the next day. I had a Salvadoran bfast there with fried plantains, beans, eggs, bread, and choco café and then returned back to the center before class to finish off the last two pieces of pumpkin pie, one of apple pie, and two plates of ice cream for bfast. Haha, I can see Megan cringing in Greenville right now. Don’t worry megan, I didn’t eat a formal lunch. Just grazed throughout the day on oranges, chips, and then pancake mix I found and ate the rest of with milk. We had some leftover milk from the day before and man it was good drinking today…I missed that.

Today we went and visited an orphanage/home for those children taken from their parents, and it was really really nice. Apparently its funded by an organization that is out of Austria, but is based all over the world. Some big rich guy’s trust fund from Austria is mainly supporting it. They live as a community in separate houses etc etc. We played with them for a while before being presented with an opportunity to buy Christmas cards they make. I bought some for the fam….you’ll be receiving them for Christmas.

The last part of the day we had our final exit interviews for Spanish, after which they said I have jumped 2 ½ levels to Advanced Medium/Low. There are three levels of beginner, three for intermediate, three for advanced, and then a Superior, and then Native ranking. Whatever that means. I can communicate, that’s what matters. After two years they said I should be superior….better be, I will be disgruntled if not. After that I spent the rest of the day in the center planning for the Family Fiesta tomorrow for all the host fams. Fun stuff.

The next week is going to be so full. Tomorrow is the fiesta which I have to get there early to set up, then after I’m shopping with the fam in the afternoon and making bread, and then Im making them dinner at night. Tomorrow, we have the hike up the volcano…Chichontepec. Its only a 6 hour hike up, and then whatever down. Wonderful. Mon-Wed, we spend every waking minute in orientation, and then we leave Thurs morning for San Sal and our Swearing In. Word is the Ambassador isn’t even coming to swear us in, but one of his assistants….ahahaha this whole thing keeps getting better and better. No crazy food, fam, embassy, ambassador etc. I heard that the budget for next year is getting cut by 2/3 for El Sal. Crazy stuff going on in the world these days.

“I’m thankful for free will, its not by fate that I’m here today, but by the fact that I made the choice to come.”

PCT Nick Jaramillo, during Thanksgiving toast….very unique

November 24

Angie at our raffle table.

Entonces, vamos a ver. Haha. Today, got up early and went to the center to work on preparations for the family fiesta. I pretty much ran around all morning trying to get ready in time with Matt and Liliana, two other trainees that were helping with me. Peace Corps gave us $320 to have a party for 120 people. And that was the number after we got rid of our Spanish teachers….sad. They gave up their plates to give us more money to work with. So if you do the math that’s less than three dollars a person. Then there’s you know, plates, tables, some kind of dessert, some to serve it in, and then buying all the stuff to make it a party instead of a sorry meal. Lol. Oh well. So I spent the morning with the other two arranging how to make the most of the money and we did pretty well I’d say. We put together a bunch of games: egg races, bowl on top of head races, donut hanging from string eating races, but we didn’t get to the bobbing for apples or balloon pooping contests before the food came. After food, we had piñatas that people in the group had made, and then we had a free raffle of items that I had gotten donated from around San Vicente. Some of them we had to buy too, but not much. All in all it went ok.

Me running the donut game at the Family Fiesta.

Afterwards, I cleaned up, then the fam and I grabbed some meat and stuff to make fajitas for a celebration dinner. It was actually pretty good. With the exception that the meat here is chewy and the Mexican tortillas they sell are crap and fall apart in your hands. Grrr. Other than that they were tasty.
The cops ran by our patio tonight chasing someone, then they came back and chatted it up with my mom and grandma and later me. Apparently they were chasing some bolo (drunkard) who had called them a bad name. HAH. This place cracks me up.

Full moon tonight. Did I mention the power was out yesterday?

The neighbors killed a huge pig tonight. It was going apenuts for like 20 mins while they were trying to catch it and tie it. I didn’t get to see the actual kill though, they took it somewhere else to do it.
Tomorrow we climb the volcano at 6:15am. We’re supposed to get back about the same time in the evening. Wonderful. It’ll either be fun or terrible.

From the written account of Mark Shea during his rationalization of the Christian Canon.
“I concluded that, left to my own resources, I would never have seen Ecclesiastes as a scriptural book. Rather, I accepted it because I had been taught to by the church I belonged to. The same goes for Esther….” (p. 65)

To conclude that chapter Shea remarks, “Therefore, I realized, one of the two things necessarily followed, either as modernism said, the canon of Scripture was a merely human tradition or else God must have ordained some sort of revelation outside of Scripture as the means by which we could know what Scripture was. There was no third option.”

Mark Shea, By What Authority

November 25

I climbed a dormant volcano today.

My body hates me for it.

Not sure what we were thinking.

Us before the hike.

Although, I guess it makes for a good story. We actually started walking at like 8 in the morning and my group (the slower one) got back at like 5pm. I was with the first group for the first part, but for the second we had a few people that wanted to quit, so I became Coach Rhett. Haha. We eventually arrived to the top, but man was that thing a beast. I brought daddy’s gps thing, and it said we were at 7,160ft at the summit. There is a small base that is kept on top from the civil war because it is such a key spot for spotting what’s going on around the area. It has a cement helipad, and once they actually let us in at the gate, we set up shop on the helicopter pad. I was worn out and starving and apparently I’m a camel cause there and back I only drank a liter and half and for some reason that amazed everyone. Oh well. Anyways, we could see everyone from there, and I stuffed my face with what I had and after I ate everyone else’s leftovers. We set our shirts out on the cement to let them dry from being soaked with sweat, but the earlier group soon wanted to leave, and off we went again. Once again we split into the slower and faster group and I stayed once again. Oh well. It was fun, my group was goofy and hilarious all at the same time…aren’t we all. We eventually made it down, around 5pm. I returned home to have to deal with the fam who wanted to see the pictures, and generally annoy me when I am in no mood to be bothered haha. Im pooped. Tomorrow, the crazy week continues with the first day of orientation all day in San V.

He cracks me up

Almost forgot. Got one of the ugliest haircuts of my life two days ago. The Peace Corps family has been giving me a hard time about it, but now I think its growing on them. It was either keep it or shave it all. I’m giving it some time to see how it’ll do. Its kind of what Hagar did when he shaved under the sides, but with a Salvadoran twist. The natives all think its normal and like it…although some people have asked if I’m in a gang, haha. We’ll see. You can see it in some of the pics I’m going to put up from the fiesta and volcano.